A Bureaucrat by any Other Name Would Smell Just as Much

Leave us count the stupid on the part of the United States Secret Service and Park Police as they booted kids with cancer out of a park, shut them out for several hours and prevented their candlelight vigil intended to help raise awareness and funds for pediatric cancer research.

Obviously the Secret Service has a difficult job that sometimes requires them to inconvenience other people. Their priority is protecting the president and vice president and their families. But...

There are ways and there are ways. One of them is probably not using armed uniformed police officers to herd kids with cancer out of Lafayette Park near the White House, close and lock the gates behind them and then let them stand outside looking in until they get tired or need to take their medications and have to go back to their hotels.

Writer Jonathan Last suspects that some of the rude and shameful actions by people we pay for may have their roots in an earlier White House choice to not use its display lights to signal support of the group as a part of its second CureFest for Cancer. The group's choice to hold its vigil in Lafayette Park -- after obtaining all of the proper permits and such -- came after that decision was made.

And it's a sign, I think, of what kind of horse's asses gravitate towards bureaucratic power that I can't automatically dismiss the thought that one of these soulless suckholes saw the vigil as a way of showing them up for their refusal and decided to get back at organizers by forcing a situation that would require a no-notice last second evacuation of the park. I would very much like to dismiss it, but the tyranny of the petty is demonstrated at all levels of government with the kind of frequency that makes it impossible to do so.

Given that the official statement from the Secret Service spokesman only "express(es) its regret for not communicating more effectively with this group concerning the timeline for protectee movements in the vicinity of Lafayette Park," it doesn't seem like there's any real awareness of what it looks like when you boot kids with cancer out of a park where they're trying raise money for research to keep themselves alive. That kind of bland-speak may be what you say to someone agitating for a nuclear freeze or an end to the National Strategic Helium Reserve. But it's not how you say you're sorry for kicking kids with cancer out of a park when they're trying to raise money to keep themselves alive. A human being would know this; I recommend the Secret Service public information office hire one forthwith and charge this person with its communication needs. Their current model has not proven adequate.

I'm sure that folks somewhere will wish to blame this on President Obama, and since I don't like him I would like to mark it against him as well. But given what we have seen of him as a father and his emotional comments following the 2011 Tucson shooting that took the life of a nine-year-old girl in addition to injuring a congresswoman, I simply do not believe that he would have deliberately orchestrated events to boot kids with cancer out of their vigil. I doubt he knew about the vigil or that anyone told him what was happening. That decision is off his plate.

But now that he knows, another decision is on his plate. He's shown a willingness to address kids victimized by bullying bureaucratic idiocy and unfair judgements. It would be a mark of distinction if he were to do so in this situation as well.